Closing Time
by The Laughing Phoenix
Summary: Prompted by the phrase "Starrk and Kyoraku would make awesome drinking buddies". Christmas present for Pyrozia, Starrk and Kyoraku friendship fic.


Summary: Prompted by the phrase 'Starrk and Kyoraku would be awesome drinking buddies'. Christmas present for **Pyrozia**, Starrk and Kyoraku friendship fic.

A/N: My sister and I were discussing Bleach when she suddenly turned to me and said: "Starrk and Kyoraku would be awesome drinking buddies!" I had to laugh, but when she pursued that line of thought, I got to thinking that she might actually have a point. Since I have far more experience with crackfics than she does, I decided to write this as a Christmas present for her. Nutcase, this is for you.

Disclaimer: **The Laughing Phoenix** does not own Bleach. This is a present for her little sister, **Pyrozia**. If sued, I will laugh you out of court.

* * *

Finally, the dust settled on the battlefield. Aizen, the greatest traitor Soul Society had ever known, was dead. As the warriors slowed, a new tide of black-clad shinigami swarmed over the field—the fourth division. They quickly and efficiently pulled the bodies straight, checking for any sign of life. The living were surrounded by knots of healers, working to stabilize them and move them to the wards. The dead were, in the case of shinigami, laid in neat rows near the de-facto base of operations, covered in plain white sheets. The dead Arrancar and hollows were laid out separately, and, once their deaths had been verified, burned.

The destruction had been enormous. Bits of Fake-Karakura had been effectively pulped, reduced to dust and rubble. It took a full reserve team of division four members half an hour to extricate the wounded lieutenants buried under what had once been a skyscraper's wall. With the horrific injuries obtained by the captains and lieutenants, the usual chains of command were broken, and the operations center was havoc, as engineering and medical teams swarmed the battlefield while scouts reported in from the borders of Hueco Mundo. By some quirk of fate, the command fell to a consortium of officers and exiles: Unohana leading her division as its members scrambled to save as many lives as possible, Yoruichi organizing scouting teams, and Urahara and Mayuri co-opting as many engineers as they could to stabilize Fake-Karakura and transfer points.

Soul Society had never had a full sense of exactly who Aizen had in his ranks. Their knowledge of his ranks was culled from battles between their Shinigami and his hollows, and the only group they believed to have fully identified was the Espada. It was generally accepted that after all the fighting, the Espada were dead, brought down by a combination of Shinigami, Vizards, and their own infighting, not to mention Aizen's executions. Even then, nobody really knew about the rest of his forces, and the sense of uncertainty made everyone anxious.

Given the lack of information, the damage the Shinigami's ranks had taken, and the sheer destruction that characterized the battlefield, it is perhaps not surprising that Starrk's body was never conclusively identified.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Ise Nanao looked up from her pile of paperwork in surprise when the hell butterflies landed in front of her, jostling each other out of the way. When she stretched out a hand to receive the messages, both of them managed to cling to her fingers at once, broadcasting the messages over each other.

_Ise-fukotaicho, when Kyoraku-taicho gets in, ask him to come over to the tenth—Ise-fukotaicho, tell your captain that the next time he—disturbing information regarding some Arrancar missed in the post-war—use an approved gate and return the gigai to the RDI—alert Soi Fon-taicho and Yamamoto-sotaicho—off with it!_

Nanao managed to identify the speakers as Captians Hitsugaya and Mayuri, but she had to convince the butterflies to hold still and deliver their messages one at a time before she could understand what they wanted to tell her.

_Ise-fukotaicho, when Kyoraku-taicho gets in, ask him to come over to the tenth as soon as possible. We've received disturbing information regarding some Arrancar missed in the post-war cleanup, and his last patrol is near the most recent sighting. If he saw anything, please ask him to alert Soi Fon-taicho and Yamamoto-sotaicho. Hitsugaya-taicho._

_Ise-fukotaicho, tell your captain that the next time he goes to the living world, he is not to damage the gigai transmission systems! Or, if he must come back early, then he is to use an __approved__ gate and return the gigai to the RDI as soon as possible, rather than wandering off with it! Kurotsuchi-taicho._

Nanao frowned. After the Winter War, captains had been given the option of taking short patrols of sites with high spiritual energy, partially to prevent a second 'Ryoka Incident', partially to identify potential problem sites. Some captain's duties precluded their leaving Soul Society, but the majority had accepted. Kyoraku-taicho was on one of these patrols now, and she didn't expect him back for another day. So why did Kurotsuchi-taicho sound like he expected Kyoraku to be in Soul Society?

She sent the butterflies back to Hitsugaya and Kurotsuchi with the same message: Kyoraku-taicho was due back in Soul Society the next day, and she would pass along their messages. Nanao would have happily walked over hot coals rather than admit it in front of her captain, but she respected his abilities and believed that, while he could be unprofessional, he wouldn't do anything stupid while on patrol. When she closed up the office for the night, she did so secure in the knowledge that her captain would be back the next day with a new set of ridiculous stories to distract her with.

Unfortunately for Nanao's peace of mind, Kyoraku had in fact done something stupid.

As a general rule, the captains were constantly sent to different 'hot spots' to briefly monitor things. This particular patrol, Kyoraku was in Los Angeles, California. The combination of size and volatility made the city and surrounding suburbs a favored hunting ground for the more intelligent—and therefore more dangerous—hollows. As if that wasn't bad enough, the entertainment industries provided a steady diet of dreams and ideas to the local humans, which had an unfortunate tendency to increase spiritual awareness. Most of the time, a group of six shinigami was assigned to the region, but with Kyoraku there two of them had been called back on leave.

That night, Kyoraku wandered into a bar. It had been a long eight days, and he was desperately in need of some alcohol. He'd noticed the bar, Los Lobos, on his second day in the city, largely by the way that it _didn't_ register on his internal radar. Bars tended to be hotspots among spirits, as they were places where the emotions of the living ran high. The fact that this one was quiet meant that he could enjoy a drink in peace, without having to worry about random ghosts engaging him in conversation. It was awkward, sometimes, trying to have conversations with ghosts. People tended to inch away slowly and give wary glances to their cell phones, and captains weren't supposed to draw attention to themselves anyway.

As he sat down on a stool at the counter, Kyoraku gave the place a once-over. Small and dark, but clean—good. The bartender, a man with shoulder-length dark brown hair and a slight goatee, took his order and placed a glass in front of him. It was a mark of how tired Kyoraku was that he didn't recognize the figure in front of him until he'd had a couple of gulps of his drink.

The third swallow went down the wrong pipe and there was a minute of coughing where Kyoraku could do little more than stare at the figure in front of him. "You!" he gasped, fighting the alcohol burn. "You're dead! I saw…"

"Don't know what you're talking about, bud." Coyote Starrk replied calmly.

"I saw you die!"

"Mister, I think you must have me confused with someone else." Starrk passed Kyoraku a napkin, then wandered down the bar to take the order of another customer. Kyoraku turned the napkin over.

_We'll talk after the bar closes. I'd rather avoid trouble._

Kyoraku spent the next few hours sitting nervously at the bar, torn between a desire for sobriety (being drunk around someone who had been his enemy could possibly qualify as the mother of all Bad Ideas) and his wish for another drink (regardless of affiliation, Starrk knew his alcohol).

Finally, the rest of the patrons cleared out, leaving Kyoraku sitting alone at the bar as Starrk and a tall Latino man cleaned up. Starrk largely ignored the shinigami sitting on the stool, toying with an empty glass, but the other man came over and stood expectantly in front of him.

"We're closed," he said, reaching for the glass, "You have to leave now."

"No te preocupes, Alejandro," Starrk cut in, "Es un amigo mío."*

Alejandro cast a disbelieving look at the former Espada. "Si tú lo dices, Lope. He terminado, hasta mañana."**

"Adios."† Starrk watched the man leave, then turned to Kyoraku. "You'll have to excuse him. Alejandro's a good kid, but a little suspicious. So." He poured out a couple of glasses of sake and passed one to Kyoraku. "What's a captain of the Gotei 13 doing in LA?"

"I think, Stark-san," Kyoraku said slowly, "That you should tell me how you are alive first."

The other man shrugged, completely relaxed. Unfairly so, Kyoraku thought. "Fair enough, I suppose." Taking a gulp from his glass, he leaned back against the bar. "It's actually fairly simple. We went over this earlier, but Lilynette and I were different from the normal Arrancar. Rather than awakening sealed abilities in resurrección, we recombined. Since we were technically two people in one form, we were tougher to kill."

Kyoraku frowned. "There's something you're not saying."

Starrk stared at him, raising an eyebrow. "And it's none of your business. Now, what's a captain of the Gotei 13 doing in LA?"

"The Gotei 13 decided that it'd be a good idea to have captains do occasional patrols of areas with high spiritual activity, both human and hollow." The laid-back captain supposed that the information was harmless enough. Starrk would have come to the same conclusion just from observing the Soul Society activity in the area. "And you? What brings the last of the Espada to Los Angeles?"

"It's a good enough place to make a living," Starrk said lazily. "The humans attract plenty of hollows, so I don't have to worry about food, and I prefer the bustle."

"How do you mean, don't have to worry about food?"

The Espada snorted. "I'm not going to eat – what's the shinigami term? Oh, yeah, 'pluses'. When a hollow hits a certain level, eating other hollows is more satisfying."

Kyoraku mulled this over for a while, nursing his drink. It seemed plausible enough. Still… "Never considered going back to Hueco Mundo?"

"Eh," Starrk shrugged. "Thought about it, but decided it wasn't worth the mess. In the beginning, I was too weak to open a Garganta, but after a while I decided I liked it better here."

"Ah." The two sat in silence for a little while, drinking. Finally, Kyoraku asked, "So what do you plan to do now?" He toyed with the glass in his hands as he studied the other man.

"Stay here for a while," Starrk said, immediately. "The Álvarez family are good people, and I like my job." He shrugged. "I'll have to move on eventually, what with the whole extended lifespan, but for now I'll be here." He glanced sideways at the shinigami, and now his expression was carefully blank. "Unless you plan on turning me in."

Kyoraku considered that for a minute. Technically, he was bound to turn the hollow in. As the only Espada to survive the war, and the Primera to boot, Starrk was bound to have a lot of information on Aizen's doings. The Gotei 13 was still finishing up the cleanup from the war, and doing whatever they could to hunt down and put an end to all of Aizen's projects. As the man had been an incredibly paranoid, ambitious, Machiavellian genius, it was slow going. On the other hand, the Primera showed no inclination to get involved in the workings of the spiritual world anytime soon, other than preying on hollows, which would cut down the shinigami's workload anyway. Kyoraku had always preferred the 'live and let live' philosophy, and as Starrk seemed willing to stay out of the Gotei 13's way…

"Now why would I do that?" Starrk didn't look convinced, so Kyoraku pressed on. "Look, you just want to keep on doing your own thing, you're not eating any pluses, and you're no threat to Soul Society. So long as you keep your head down, I don't see any reason for the Gotei 13 to know you're alive. Besides," and here a mischievous grin curled across the captain's features, "It'd practically be a sin to destroy a man so knowledgeable in life's little pleasures!" He toasted the Espada, whose lips twitched upward into a smirk.

"Figures." Starrk muttered.

The two men finished their drinks in companionable silence, then Kyoraku stood to go. When he reached the door, Starrk called after him. "Oi."

Kyoraku turned, waiting.

"Next time you're in the area, come by. I'll see if I can't get my hands on some good sake."

Grinning like a moron, the shinigami captain headed back on patrol.

The rest of the time in LA was uneventful, and Kyoraku reported in to the 12th division at the end of his rotation to return the gigai. The moment he arrived he was beset by technicians, demanding to know 'what he'd done to their gigai' and informing him that 'the communications systems were not to be tampered with'. Thoroughly nonplussed, Kyoraku managed to escape after about an hour by claiming a need to check up on his division. Not that he wasn't certain that his Nanao-chan would have kept it running smoothly in his absence.

Once he arrived in the 8th division office, Nanao presented him with the messages from the previous day. Deciding to skip the paperwork in favor of responding to the message from Hitsugaya, Kyoraku headed over to the 10th. He managed to catch Hitsugaya just as he finished off a stack of paperwork almost two feet tall.

The tiny captain had been taking on more and more responsibility during the reconstruction, and it showed. Tiny stress lines near his eyes and mouth spoke of hours spent poring over documents and records, trying to fix the damage the traitor had done. "Kyoraku-taicho, come in." If Kyoraku didn't know any better, Hitsugaya looked glad of an excuse to take a break.

"Hey," Kyoraku sprawled on the couch by the desk. "Just got back from a patrol in the Living World. Nanao-chan said you sent her a message? Something about Arrancar?"

Hitsugaya closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Yeah. Apparently some of our people have picked up readings of super-powerful hollows running around, ones with a hint of shinigami to them. That tallies with the way Arrancar showed up on our scans leading up to the war, so Soi Fong and Yamamoto-sotaicho think we've got some of Aizen's soldiers running around."

"Damn." Kyoraku raised his eyebrows. "More of his experiments?"

"Unfortunately," Hitsugaya sighed. "I just wish we could get ahold of his records, but with the mess that everything's been recently…and who knows if he even kept written records. All I know is that it's making a bad situation worse."

"Well, I didn't see anything of Aizen's Arrancar on patrol," the older shinigami hauled himself to his feet. "So I'm afraid I can't be more help there. I'm gonna head back to the 8th, see how everything's been going while I was gone. If you need me, I'll be there." As he headed out the door, Kyoraku turned back to look at the other captain. "You look like you're going to fall asleep at your desk. Take a break."

Kyoraku lost himself in the work of his division and in the reconstruction of Soul Society. By the time he was due for patrol again, the encounter with the last of the Espada had been pushed to the back of his mind.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

It was perhaps eight months before Kyoraku was assigned to patrol LA again. On meeting with the assigned shinigami for briefing, he was told that the area had been relatively quiet for a population center so volatile, with the exception of an incursion the month before. A group of Hollows was detected in one of the suburbs, and they hunted down a small pack, although smaller in size than the readings indicated. Kyoraku took this to mean that Starrk had gotten to the hollows first, and was perfectly content to pass the smaller number off as the result of infighting.

A couple of nights in, the captain made his way back to Los Lobos. Starrk was behind the bar. When the bar closed for the night (without Alejandro) the ex-Espada wandered down to the shinigami and passed him a bottle of sake. "Got it as a Christmas present. It's not bad."

Kyoraku agreed. "So, had a good few months?"

Starrk shrugged. "Not bad. Had to go up to San Francisco a few months back when that crazy second division captain came out, but other than that it's been fairly quiet." He refilled the glasses. "You?"

"Pretty much the same. Hitsugaya damn near had a breakdown a couple of months ago and Unohana had to bar him from entering his office for a week, but things are going back to normal."

"Hitsugaya…the little ice-dragon, right? Tiny, but fierce?"

"That's him."

"I don't think I know Unohana, though." Starrk said thoughtfully. "I recognize the name from Aizen's briefings, but I don't think we ever met face-to-face."

"Unohana-taicho's captain of the fourth. Nice woman, but scary as hell sometimes." The two sat in silence for a few minutes, before Kyoraku changed the subject. "So, I've got to ask. How're you doing it?" At his companion's look of incomprehension, he continued on. "I came here originally 'cause it's a spiritual dead zone. No ghosts, no spirits, no nothing. Couldn't even sense you until you were right in front of me. Then, when I got back to Seretei, the 12th was all over me going on about disrupting the communications systems in my gigai. So how're you doing it?"

Starrk smirked. "The only thing I'm doing is lowering my reiatsu levels. That's it. The Álvarez family handles the rest."

"You're kidding."

"Nope." Refilling their glasses, he went on, "Los Lobos was started by Alejandro's old man, Luis. Luis' mother was from a long line of curanderas, and his sister Camila carried on the tradition. His wife, Ramona, is from a family of Navajo medicine men and women. When Luis got this place, the two of them worked to purify it of negative influences and lock them out. The idea was to cut down on bar fights by reducing the 'bad vibes' in the air, but the side effect is that this place doesn't have much spiritual energy. It all gets pushed out or dampened."

"So that's why you chose to work here."

"That, and I liked the name." Starrk shrugged. "They're good people. I told them I was mestizo, half-Japanese and half-Spanish, and that I used to be in the military but took honorable discharge recently. They consider me a family friend and don't ask too many questions."

"Y'know, I forgot to ask. I think the kid called you Lope last time I was here. Change your name?"

Starrk gave a mocking little half-bow. "Lope Wakahisa, at your service."

Kyoraku chuckled.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

The rest of the patrol went uneventfully, and Kyoraku returned to Soul Society on time. As time continued, the Gotei 13 finished rebuilding itself, and he liked to think it was a little better than before. Every so often, someone would suggest phasing out the lieutenant and captain patrols, but nobody wanted to risk a second Karakura, so they stayed. To the surprise of many of his fellows, Kyoraku was a staunch defender of the patrols. Eventually, they decided that he enjoyed having an excuse to go to the Living World and get away from the paperwork, and left it alone.

Nobody ever seemed to notice that the captain of the eighth division regularly patronized bars named Los Lobos, located in a variety of metropolises; Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, Shanghai, Madrid, Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Saint Petersburg, Sao Paolo, the list went on. Nor did they notice the way it was always the same bartender, a tall, thin man with dark brown hair and a goatee.

* * *

*"Don't worry about it, Alejandro. He's a friend of mine."

**"If you say so, Lope. I'm done, see you tomorrow."

†"Bye."

Lope – Spanish name meaning 'wolf'. Wakahisa – Japanese surname meaning 'forever young'.

A/N: Thanks to my lovely **Rusting Roses** for betaing this ramble as quickly as she did. Rosie, you rock. Nutcase-sister-o'-mine, I hope you enjoyed. Extra points to whoever can find the Dresden Files reference.

Note: The names of the Álvarez family all have to do with protection. Álvarez itself means 'son of the guardian of all'. Alejandro is the Spanish form of Alexander, which means 'defender'. Luis is 'famous warrior', Ramona is the female form of Raymond, which is 'protector', and Camila is 'warrior maiden'. I thought it was appropriate for a family Starrk trusts to accept his oddities and whose innate defenses he relies on. And yes, I was having waaaay too much fun with this.


End file.
